Reviews

A previous commentator writes that: "The story is totally ludicrous and a feeble, shameless attempt to promote evolution. Only a leftist loony would believe this stuff."

Just to set the record straight, the concept of "evolution" promoted by the film is a gross distortion of actual evolutionary theory, suggesting as it does that evolution involves some sort of mystical forces and that certain so-called "living fossils" contain some sort of substance which somehow counteracts these forces. None of this actually makes in any sense, however, in terms of the actual science.

To sum up, evolutionary theory is perfectly valid science, and there's nothing particularly shameful about promoting it as science, contrary to what the above poster might think. OTOH, the movie's conception of what evolution actually means is just plain silly.

A short commentary: Having read through a few of the comments here, I note that there are several which express disappointment that the movie didn't do the book justice. Personally, having read the book some time after seeing the movie, I can understand their point, but realistically it's the type of book which would be nearly be impossible to do justice to, as there are so many broad interwoven threads in the book that it would require at least a 6 hour movie to even scratch the surface, and even then, putting it all together into a singular coherent whole which would hold the viewer's interest for that long would be quite a mean feat indeed. So instead of looking at it as an attempt to fully capture the book, it might be best to simply appreciate it for what it is, rather than what it isn't. And I believe that on its own terms it succeeds admirably, and remains one of my favorite movies of all time.

Another way of looking at this, as an introduction to the book, rather than vice versa it has some value on those terms. Perhaps if I hadn't seen the movie I might never have happened upon the book, and never known what I'd missed.